chamois and began to rub the side of the cup where I could dimly distinguish engraved letters. Presently I was able to make out enough of the legend:

DONUM STEPHANI GAYLORDI-A. D. 1635..

I had rubbed the Deacon's treasure, and what genie of disillusion had I evoked! Alas! for the memory of Deacon Poole! Where was now my pattern of godliness, of all that my childish fancy, in revulsion from its first dread, had found ideal? What of the halo which during these long years had surrounded in my memory those silver locks? I had come on a pilgrimage to the shrine of my childish saint. And I found the relics impostures, the shrine a mockery, my faith ́a superstition.

Yet who was I to judge him? A different duty was mine: to protect the memory of the old man whom I had loved and who had been good

to me.

What was to be done? Whatever the Deacon had intended, I could not keep the stolen cup. It must be returned to its 1ightful guardians. Yet how disclose the secret without bringing disgrace upon the Deacon's name? The townsfolk would not understandwho might? what the Deacon had done out of mistaken antiquarian zeal. Could even I who loved him pretend to see the matter as that crotchety, whimsical, queer old old man, with his passion for ancient things, had done?

Certainly the Deacon's memory must be kept untarnished in all minds but my own. I alone had the affection which would sustain so severe a shock. The cup must be returned to the church. The Dea

con might have been disgusted with the congregation of former days because they had not appreciated this treasure, but I knew that to-day they would do so. I had heard that the new minister was intelligent and progressive. Doubtless he shared the fashionable antiquarian interest of the day. He was the rightful guardian of the stolen chalice.

I closed the panel and replaced the drawers. After search I found a newspaper which I wrapped around the cup in its chamois covering, making a disreputable bundle. With one farewell look at the old room which I should never see again I went out, locking the door behind me. I hid my bundle among the inquisitive hollyhocks and returned the key to the neighboring caretaker, leaving directions for having the desk shipped to my home.

That evening, which was moonless, I left the hotel where, rather than in my Uncle's house, I had chosen to remain for my brief stay in Kimpton, and stole out into the darkness. I recovered my unlucky package and hastened with it to the house of the minister. It was strange to find myself after all these years slinking guiltily about the village with the stolen cup, quite in the character which as a child I had deprecated. It was strange to find. myself taking such pains to conceal the fault of that judge whose censure I had once dreaded more than anything in the world.

I stole up to the reverend doorstep and deposited my guilty burden on the threshold. Then I gave a vigorous pull at the bell, and like a naughty little boy sped away into the dark, leaving the minister's

THE STORY

of

THE

BY

PAULINE CARRINGTON BOUVE

O

NCE upon a time, so runs an eastern legend, a weaver met a prophet and pointing to the work upon his loom, said: "O Prophet, I passed through the wood and heard the voices of young birds and I took and put them into my carpet, and their mother came fluttering about my head."

These lines from a Persian poet were quoted in an American publication not long ago by a writer who was discussing carpet weaving in the East and there is a deep and subtle meaning in the words of the weaver. Consciously or unconsciously, perhaps, the poet was emphasizing the truth that he who interprets that which is all about him, is greater than he who divines the future.

It is when one is standing before one of the comparatively few remaining antique specimens of specimens of Persian loom-craft, that the full significance of the weaver's words is understood, for in no other handicraft are the colors so wonderfully reproduced as in the oriental rug. The weaver, by some strange alchemy, extracts from root and bark, leaf and blossom, lotions that give

back to him the glories of the sunset, the shadows of forest and jungle, the mystery of the sacred river. Under his hand, the roses so beloved by the Epicurean Omar, bloom again and the individuality of his soul and brain is wrought into the pattern of his fabric.

But for us the story of the rug holds very different associations from those suggested by rose gardens, royal palace hangings, and the ceremonials connected with the sacred bull.

For Jew and Christian the history of the handicraft of the loom holds an especial interest, and there is not a woman in Jewry or Christendom who can but feel a thrill of pride when she reads in that ancient chronicle of Moses of the "free gift offerings" given in response to the command: "Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering to the Lord." The story is told simply, directly: "And all the women who were wise-hearted did spin with their hands and brought that

which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen. And all of the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' hair."

Here indeed are two things of especial interest. In the first place, we find the earliest mention in sacred literature of the weaver's craft; in the second place, that spinning and weaving were especially woman's work. This is now and has always been true in all parts of the Orient. The earliest representations on Egyptian and Babylonian tiles show women at the loom with the figure of a man standing behind them, whose business it was to call out the number of knots to be tied in red, blue or purple, which were to develop the design.

The rug frames used to-day are like those used thousands of years ago. The structure is simply made of four poles lashed together upon which first the warp and then the woof is strung. Then, little by little, the design is made by tying

in short bits of wool or silk, and the greater number of these finger-tied knots there are to the square inch, the more costly the rug. Sometimes there are as many as eleven thousand, two hundred and seventy of these knots to a square measuring twenty-seven inches, a space technically called a "pick."

In the Daghestan, Herat, and Bokhara rugs, one may, if one has the fever of statistical accuracy upon him,-count from one hundred and forty-five to three hundred knots to the inch. knots to the inch. Think of the patience, the skill of of eye and hand, that must be acquired in slowly fashioning geometrical figures, flowers, trees, birds and in some instances, as in the Royal Persian Hunting Carpet, animal and human figures, through the long years of an uneventful life! this is what the rug makers of the East have been doing for thousands of years gone, and will be doing for centuries to come, unless, indeed, the vulgarity of occidental commercialism and machinery and aniline

Yet

dyes invade the East and destroy an art whose origin is an unsolved mystery!

Egypt, the birthplace of so many of the arts, was probably the land in which the rug was first made, but since the time of the conquering Cyrus, Persia has maintained the first place in the rank of carpet makers, teaching in turn Greek Arab, Afghan and Hindu, how to make poems in color from the fleece. of their flocks and the hair of their goats and camels; leaving in geometrical lines, flower and leaf, temple lamp and niche, textile records of the manners, customs and religion of the people of that region of mystery and prophecy that we generically call "the East."

The advent of the rug in Europe was the result of two contemporaneous events; the conquest of Spain by the Saracens and the wars of the Crusades. Curiously enough, the exchange of the cross of the cathedral for the minaret of the mosque in the West, and the conflict of Christian with infidel in the East, brought into Europe the first specimens of an industrial art hitherto unknown. Tapestries and embroideries were, indeed, fashioned by court ladies and convent recluses long before this period.

Tradition claims, and its appearance apparently justifies the claim, that it was Matilda, the wife of William of Normandy, and the first

Norman queen of England, who left that famous historical record of the battle of Hastings and the events that preceded the defeat of Harold, written in worsted and known as the Bayeux tapestry. Master Wace, who extols the value of the chronicle, assures us "that short would be the fame of any after their death if their history did not endure by being written in the book of the clerk." The loyal wife of the conqueror thought likewise, perhaps, and determined to leave the story of her husband's fame, not indeed in the "book of the clerk," but in a scroll of needlework that should tell to succeeding generations how Harold fell and William conquered.

History and tradition agree that William, on the occasion of his first return to Normandy, took with. him a train of Saxon nobles who had not yet realized how Norman ambition was to trample upon Saxon pride. In this train there were Saxon dames and damsels and Matilda eagerly sought to engage their skill in her enterprise, for "En-gel-land" was already noted. for the beautiful needlework of its ladies. Imagination makes a pretty picture of the fair-haired, blue-eyed maids and matrons of England and the dark-eyed, vivacious French court ladies, sitting in Matilda's boudoir plying their needles in and out of the long linen scroll, fashion